A little pre-made pie dough cut with a biscuit cutter and baked in muffin tins was the first step. I rolled out the leftover dough, covered it with sugar and cinnamon and baked it like my mom used to when I was a kid. The black rod is a core sample of marble from a quarry I stopped at last summer. It makes a perfect rolling pin!! Thanks to Tom Westerfield for spying it in a corner of the shop!!
I found a quick and tasty recipe for the filling using fresh strawberries, jello, sugar and water. Guess I should have made the shells a little bigger. One large tablespoon of juice overflowed nicely all over the counter. I popped them into the fridge to set before topping them with tons of whipped cream. YUM YUM!!! Take two ... they're small and not high in calories!! I think you can even buy pre-made shells for your next RV rally potluck!!
Gee ... if I can do that, maybe I can bake that six inch strawberry cake. A quick search of town resulted in a local Michaels store, full of Wilton cake supplies and baking goods. I did wonder how it was going to work in my convection oven, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. There MUST be a way to bake a good cake in this type of oven. Yesterday however, wasn't going to be the day!!
All the convection recipe books I have call for Low Bake, 350 degrees, 25 minutes. The recipe said this cake needed one hour. That was pretty hard to translate. As you can see, it translated to an overdone cake. I cut it into three layers and filled it with sliced strawberries. There isn't much that frosting can't cover up or make taste yummy, right??
I'm here to tell you that's not true after all!! After frosting with a mixture of cream cheese, butter and white chocolate and WAY too much red food coloring, I took a taste. DARN!!! That frosting recipe was horrible!! Another candidate for my ever increasing cemetery.
The good news is that Nick and Terry Russell pulled in to the Elks Lodge here yesterday afternoon and I was able to discuss Convection Cake Baking 101 with the best RV Cook around. Course she uses her Breville Oven, which I left home, but I'm determined to try her calculations and make a decent microwave/convection oven cake, just to prove that once in a blue moon I really CAN cook!!
One last thing before I hit the parking lot running again, I would like to note that Nick's reputation for rain following him around the U.S. is in fact, TRUE!! I checked my weather app this morning and YES, it's supposed to sprinkle on and off for the next two days. Maybe we can talk him into hanging around California for the next couple of months!!
I follow both yours and Nick's blogs. I was wondering if you were going to catch up together. Glad to see it all came together. Do you bake the six inch cake in a single pan and then cut it or do you bake each layer in a separate pan, like a normal layer cake? Just curious. What were you thinking leaving, the Breville Oven home?. It is probably more useful in the RV then back in you kitchen at home. Especially for the next few months. It's not the first item you mentioned that you wished you had packed. I hope you are keeping a list for packing next year. Glad to see your enjoying your late spring trip. Jim
ReplyDeleteI did meet up with Nick and Terry here in Eureka and will spend more time with them this summer, Jim.
DeleteOne tall cake pan, cut into three layers so no baking three times for one cake. You're right about the oven ... big mistake leaving it home!! I now have a list on my computer that I add to constantly! LOL
When I seen that Nick and Terry was heading to Eureka I had guested they were meeting so you guys could tour the Oregon coast together. I hope you guys have a fun filled safe adventure.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping to meet Nick and Terry while they were in Santa Rosa, but time didn’t permit. Trust me when I say they were very busy. I was surprised Nick didn’t visit the Pacific Coast Air Museum. Maybe next time they’re so must to see around here you can’t do it all in the time they had.
Jim M,
Actually it's just by chance that we are ending up at the same places the same time ... mostly due to the Kite Festival in Washington, which drew us both this direction. I'm sure if Nick hasn't seen the Pacific Coast Air Museum in the past, it's on his list for next time. There's just so much to see and never enough time!! I had no idea there was so much around Santa Rosa ... it's on my list now too!!!
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